First TC Lispers Meeting A Success

The first meeting of the TC Lispers group was a big success, IMO.
I was figuring on an attendance near 20. My estimate is that it was
really right around 40. That left us a little cramped in the meeting
room at the Cafe, but we managed. We also lost the room before the
presentation portion of the meeting was completely done, so there
wasn’t much time for mingling. Actually, there was apparently a
patio where people mingled afterward. I didn’t see this and
took off too early. Mea culpa.

The presentation at this first meeting was
on NST (not an abbreviation or
acronym, but a sound effect /unsst/) which is a testing framework for
Common Lisp. John Maraist did
the presentation.
He was a lively presenter, definitely had a good grasp on some dark
corners of Lisp (like exactly what’s involved in the underbelly
of MOP). Being a Haskell hacker though, he had some strange opinion
that Lisp would be better if only it had strong typing. Well, what
can you do? I mean, it’s not like he kicks puppies, I suppose.
8^)

It was great to see so many Lispers at so many levels there. About
six or seven folks worked at Honeywell at some point in the past.
Apparently, Honeywell had lots of Lisp development at one point. Who
knew? About six or seven folks (overlapping a bit with the previous
group) currently work at SIFT. There
were some University students, a University teacher, some Ruby folks
who wanted to see what Lisp was all about, some Lisp hobbyists, some
independent consultants, some folks who can get Lisp in under the
radar in their jobs, and on and on.

The next meeting is going to be 6pm on Tuesday, July 14th at
the Common Roots cafe on
26th and Lyndale in Minneapolis. The topic is not quite set yet, but
it seems like it might be a series of short talks on introductory
aspects of Lisp.

There’s much discussion going on on
the mailing
list about finding a bigger venue for August and onward.
There’s much discussion about exact topics for next
month’s meeting. If you’re able to make it to the Twin
Cities on a Tuesday evening, mark your calendars and come on out.